【推荐1】With a relatively small population, pandas are not out of the woods or the bamboo forest just yet. The biggest threat to the wild panda population is habitat loss. And while around 54%of its wild habitat is protected, these areas are still vulnerable to natural disasters, such as wildfires. To protect panda habitat, the Digital Panda System, developed in a joint venture between the Sichuan Forest and Grassland Administration and Chinese technology giant Huawei, was used effectively across forest and grasslands in Sichuan Province.

The instant reporting system helps to detect wildfires in hard-to-reach areas, alerting fire departments so they can intervene (干预) quickly, as well as monitoring wildlife. Meanwhile, another smart technology-facial recognition-could help identify individual pandas more accurately. Each panda has a unique facial structure and hair pattern. To the human eye, their fur-covered faces all look the same, but computer algorithms are able to distinguish the differences.

The system collects data from 596 cameras, 45 infrared cameras, drones and satellites, which it stores in the cloud. Researchers use this data to monitor, track and study wildlife, as well as detect wildfire hotspots. Because the cameras are used in remote areas where there is little or no electricity, the system is solar powered and uses microwave transmission (传送), which doesn’t require cables (电缆).

The system assists 140,000 forest rangers, grassland managers, conservationists and researchers in Sichuan. In its first five months of operations, it detected 651 wildfire hotspots, reducing forest fires by 71.6% compared to the same period the previous year.

Despite its name, the Digital Panda System offers protection to more than just pandas. The system covers the Sichuan section of the newly established Giant Panda National Park. The park is home to most of China’s 1800 wild pandas-along with a further 8000 animal and plant species. In the future, the digital panda system could be extended across the sections of the national park that lie in Shanxi and Gansu provinces, creating more success stories for other endangered species.

【推荐2】The "world's loneliest elephant" has been resettled at a sanctuary （保护区）in Cambodia after receiving some assistance from iconic （偶像的）singer Cher, who has been advocating for Kaavan's resettlement along with her animal welfare group Free the Wild.

Kaavan, a 36-year-old, 9,000-pound elephant, was given the nickname after he was diagnosed as being emotionally and physically damaged while living in a zoo in Islamabad, Pakistan, for 35 years. During that time, Kaavan was mostly chained in his fence, and when his partner died in 2012, her body laid next to him for several days before it was removed. Vets have diagnosed Kaavan as being overweight, malnourished （营养不 良）and suffering from behavioral issues due to isolation.

Kaavan was tested for COVID-19 before his seven-hour journey, which was complete with 440 pounds of snacks. Amir Khalil, a vet who accompanied him on the flight and works with Four Paws, the animal rescue group that organized the move, described Kaavan as behaving like a "frequent flier,” saying that the elephant did not seem stressed and even slept while standing in his crate （大木箱）.

On Monday, Kaavan arrived in Cambodia and he made his way north by truck to his new home in the Oddar Meanchey province. Once he feels settled, he will be released from his temporary enclosure and allowed to roam the sanctuary, which houses about 600 Asian elephants. Animal rights groups and activists appealed for years to move Kaavan into better conditions.

Kaavan will require years of psychological and physical assistance, experts have said. Living in an enclosure with improper flooring caused his nails to crack and overgrow, and he developed a habit of shaking his head back and forth for hours, which vets attributed to boredom. The elephant has lost half a ton since his diet was changed to fruit and vegetables, Khalil said. He was previously eating about 550 pounds of pure sugarcane every day and some fruits and vegetables.

【推荐3】Confessions of an annoying Mosquito

If you’re reading my confessions (自白), congratulations! You’ll have a safe and healthy summer.

We love when you work up a sweat. It’s really the carbon dioxide you breathe out that makes us beeline to ward you, not the fragrance of your “sweet blood.”

Love beer? So do some of us. They can tell when you’ve been drinking because your skin chemistry changes, and it attracts them

Pregnant? Yum. If you’re having a baby, you emit more carbon dioxide and your belly has a higher temperature, drawing some of us right to you. Sorry, baby.

Hate getting bitten up? Blame the ladies. Males do not eat human blood: They get all their nutrition from plants. After we have a blood meal, we can lay anywhere from 100 to 400 eggs

Smelly feet are simply delicious. Scientists have shown we find your toes ten times more inviting than Limburger cheese.

If your home’s landscaping is well tended, we won’t like it as much. We like to hang out in thick, overgrown vegetation. The darker and more damp, the better. And puddles (水沟) of smelly water is where we like to lay our eggs.

Got those CO₂-emitting traps in your yard? Great! You may think you’re outsmarting us with these devices, which emit carbon dioxide to lure (引诱) us into a trap. But they may attract more of us than they are able to trap, increasing our presence in your yard.

When it comes to West Nile, end-of-summer bites may do more harm. It’s simple logic: We bite birds with West Nile virus; then we bite humans and spread it. By summer’s end, we’ve had more chances to bite infected birds.

【推荐1】I put my beef in the fridge before the “Use By” date. If my milk’s “Best If Used By” date— the last date by which food quality (质量)is the best — was yesterday, I’d never have it. The bread that expired (过期)last week? Throw it away. But after studying the different types of “expiration” labels (标签).I learned that food lasts longer than I thought.

In fact, food expiration dates talk about food quality, not food safety. They are added as a helpful guide to sellers and buyers. Here are the three most common labels.

“Best If Used By“—This date suggests when a product will be at the highest quality. It will still be safe to eat after that date, but the quality will start to go down.

”Use By“—This date is usually found on items that go bad more easily, like meat. It’s still OK to eat the product for a short period after the date, but don’ t wait too long.

”Sell By“—This date tells sellers when the product should be off the shelves. Sales are one way that stores try to get older products into people’s bags, and it usually works quite well.

“Use by” dates are a great guide for people like you and me, but it comes at a price. A report says that Americans waste about 30% of food every year. Part of that is because we follow expiration dates too closely and end up throwing out perfectly good food. It’s such a shame. Luckily, we can change. Decide for yourself whether or not food should be thrown away. Does the color look right? Is the smell bad? Knowing what food is supposed to look, smell and feel like is a life skill that we all should have. It will help you avoid eating food that’s gone bad and stop you from throwing away food too early.

【推荐3】Look out, Einstein, a robot wants your job! This robot, named Adam, may be the first non-human to ever independently think up and test hypotheses in order to discover new scientific knowledge. Adam’s discoveries so far have something to do with yeast genetics — not nearly as mind-blowing as Einstein’s theories on relativity, but still impressive when you realize that nobody told Adam which yeast gene to study. “Adam makes up its mind about what to do,” Rose King of Aberyth University in the United Kingdom, the robot’s creator, told CBC News in Canada. “It decides what experiments to do and what to test.”

Of course, Adam’s choices are limited by the information King feeds it and the lab equipment it has access to. The physical robotic system includes robotic arms, a freezer, fans and equipment useful for biological research. Adam also has loads of data on yeast and other organisms.

To decide what to do, Adam finds a place where the yeast genetic data is incomplete, and then searches for complete information about similar genes in other organisms. By comparing all of this data, Adam is able to form a hypothesis and start experimenting. Adam can bring up to 1,000 new experiments each day.

Why Yeast? Biologists use this simple organism as a model for more complex ones, like human cells. So far, Adam has figured out the functions of 12 different yeast genes. When King and his team tested Adam’s results, everything was correct. Eventually, Adam will be able to move beyond yeast as long as King uploads the data necessary for new experiments. King’s team has also built a new robotic scientist named Eve. This robot will screen new drugs for diseases like malaria.

Robotics has been useful in scientific laboratories for a long time, but usually the machines just do the work and deal with data that humans have to sort through. This is the first time a robot has not only designed its own experiment, but determined its own results! Still, modern Einsteins should not worry about being replaced. Robot scientists like Adam are much more likely to be lab assistants rather than brilliant theorists.